Movie Reviews

Shysters Cash In on Star's Untimely Death

doomsdayer520 | Pennsylvania | 01/15/2006

(1 out of 5 stars)

"For all that is sacred and holy, do not spend money on this atrocity. I came across it because it was included in a budget-priced DVD collection that I picked up, full of old so-bad-they're-good kung fu flicks, but this item isn't even good enough for that crowd. Produced by some hack named Serafim Karalexis, this film is shameless enough to call itself "The Real Bruce Lee" even though it primarily features the look-alikes that movie producers trotted out after Bruce's sudden death in 1973, hoping to make money off a gullible public that was hungry for more of Bruce's incredible martial arts mastery. There were many inferior films (with equally inferior Bruce imitators) that tried to cash in, and this one is among the most brazen.

This so-called "biopic" starts out with a basic life story of Bruce Lee, information that is freely available anywhere, and presents excerpts from some of the Hong Kong films that Bruce appeared in as a child actor in the '40s and '50s. This material might actually be of interest to collectors and historians, but there's not much of it and the video quality is horrendous. Next, the narrator tells us about Bruce's classic films, but accompanied only by still shots of movie posters, and with no actual footage. This means that the clowns behind this biopic couldn't get the rights. And then the ultimate shamelessness commences.

The narrator tells us that Bruce was so great that he spawned many knock-offs, because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. (Bring me a shovel.) After some brief footage of various useless wooden-faced imitators, this film then concludes with 63 minutes (that's right SIXTY-THREE minutes) of action scenes starring another look-alike named Dragon Lee, a crony of Karalexis. Concerning this Dragon Lee, he had some serious martial arts skills and could have been a legitimate star in his own right. But he will be forever remembered as a shallow wannabe who got mixed up with hucksters and charlatans, often imitating the real Bruce's menacing facial expressions but coming up woefully short on Bruce's complex charisma (just like all the other look-alikes). At the end of Dragon Lee's incredibly lengthy on-screen audition, the narrator says, "we all know there is only one Bruce Lee... his memory will live forever." You hear this while watching an imitator, and no image of Bruce himself has been seen since the still movie posters back near the beginning of this travesty. Shameless, pathetic, unforgivable. [~doomsdayer520~]"